Wallace: I Was Right to Bash Bush at WWII Memorial

CBS "60 Minutes" star Mike Wallace last night defended his decision to use a Washington, D.C., World War II memorial event that he and USA Today founder Al Neuharth attended on Friday to bash President Bush as unfit to be commander in chief.

"It seemed to both to Neuharth and to me that it was the right venue because we talked about it ahead of time," Wallace told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.

"It was a venue in which we are celebrating a war in which so many people died. But they died in the service of something that they deeply believed in."

The event, held a day before the unveiling of the official WWII Memorial on the Capitol Mall, was supposed to offer journalists a chance to swap war stories and reminisce. But Wallace and Neuharth quickly departed from the script to take pot shots at Bush.

The CBS veteran's remarks included unfavorable comparisons between FDR, George Washington and Bush and an assessment that the Iraq war effort "sure is not a noble enterprise."

NewsMax's Inside Cover first reported on Wallace's outrage this Monday. (See story – Click Here.)

Last night, however, after O'Reilly repeatedly questioned the propriety of politicizing the memorial event, Wallace shifted gears, confessing, "I should not probably have said it there."

Through the years Wallace has argued that he has been a nonpartisan journalist. But he has a long track record of offering public criticism only of Republican presidents.

Editor's note: